Biography

Manoel de Oliveira was born in Porto, Portugal on December 11, 1908, to Francisco José de Oliveira and Cândida Ferreira Pinto. His family were wealthy industrialists. Oliveira attended school in Galicia, Spain and his goal as a teenager was to become an actor. He enrolled in Italian film-maker Rino Lupo's acting school at age 20, but later changed his mind when he saw Walther Ruttmann's documentary Berlin: Symphony of a City. This prompted him to direct his first film, also a documentary, titledDouro, Faina Fluvial (1931).